What’s the harm of a little religious belief exercised in the public domain?

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia) is member of the Science Committee of the House of Representatives and chairs the House Science Committee’s panel on investigations and oversight. He claims to be a scientist because he’s a medical doctor, which reminds me to remember that half of all medical doctors graduated from the bottom portion of their class.

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There are 40 members of the Science Committee, the body charged with oversight of all its subcommittees responsible for legislative jurisdiction and investigative authority on all matters relating to science policy and science education. It also has jurisdiction over research and development relating to health and biomedical programs, the very issues and programs where religious beliefs are most likely to clash with science in the public domain. On this committee is the infamous Congressman Todd Akin, the same wing nut who proposed the insane theory that a woman can’t get pregnant from a rape because their body somehow knows the difference and does something to stop pregnancy from occurring. In addition, we have Congressman Randy Neugebauer of Texas, who introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to pray for fair weather. His resolution resolved that “people in the United States should join together in prayer to humbly seek fair weather conditions, including calm skies in the South and lower Midwest where tornadoes have ravaged homes and uprooted families, and for rain where rain is most needed in the South and Southwest, where devastating drought and dangerous wildfires have destroyed homes, businesses, and lives.”

The question now becomes how such dedicated anti-science christian soldiers ever gained so much public authority? Well, it turns out that that they all belong to Congressman Randy Forbes’s Congressional Prayer Caucus… the same caucus who continues to try to legislate away accurate American history and implement a favourable revisionist one to turn the secular nation into a christian one. But this agenda is not held in check to just history. In fact, if you want to head up the various subcommittees who actually implement public scientific policies (not to mention the House Armed Services Committee), your chances are greatly improved if you are a member of the Prayer Caucus. Although only 11 of the members of the Science Committee are member of the Prayer Caucus, they make up a disproportionate number of committee chairs and 5 of 12 positions on the Subcommittee on Research and Science Education.

This is how religious belief undermines public policy: rather than government in the service of the public, government populated with those dedicated to undermining it replaces its service to advance religious ideas profoundly anti-scientific. And we’re supposed to roll over and tolerate this abuse in the name of religious respect? I don’t think so.

From Dr. Greg Mayer: “That Broun is an MD spewing such nonsense is made deliciously comic by the Nobel Prize for Medicine being awarded for embryology the day after Broun became infamous, but the tale becomes tragic when you realize he is a member of the House Science Committee.

From Andrew Sullivan: “Fundamentalism is not about being dumb; it is an act of will to over-ride reality with totalist faith, so that nothing is left unresolved and everything can be explained by a single text, or a single religious leader.”

From Bill Nye: “Since the economic future of the United States depends on our tradition of technological innovation, Representative Broun‘s views are not in the national interest… For example, the Earth is simply not 9,000 years old… He is, by any measure, unqualified to make decisions about science, space, and technology.

the Bible is his guide? When is he going to start advocating the stoning to death of adulterous women? It’s in his guide-book. Like most, he’ll never advocate this because he’s a hypocrite, and doesn’t have the courage of his convictions. You either believe in ALL of it or none of it; you can’t pick and choose. God will smite you dead for doubting him and not doing as he commands. ( it may take 70 or 80 yearss, but once you’ve been smote, you’re dead)

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Questionable Motives is a site dedicated to raising important questions in the never-ending battle between rationality and superstition, offering commentary about topical issues, and addressing which of these motivations is truly being served.